#cicada
Date written: June 20, 2024
[email protected]
The Cicada
By: Yisselakh
Intro:
Therein lies the rub
You're mistaking the grubs
You can't even tell between the cicada and the wasp
When it's so obvious
So obvious
Chorus:
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Content with its own love
Even if its something perhaps
Only he'll love
Verse 1:
And you still think you know
The stranger of the olive grove
The slacker shut out of the ant's abode
And we always think we are the ants
In these stories told
At least that's what's sold
At least that's what's sold
To us
Chorus:
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Content with its own love
Even if its something perhaps
Only he'll love
Verse 2:
You looked in the pond
And felt rather cross
This ant looks too much like a cicada
You feel it's too late to accept who you are
When you spend most your life lost
Doesn't the right way feel like the wrong path
Is this the fallacy of sunk cost
Bridge:
Unable to accept
Unable to accept
CODA Chorus:
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Content with its own love
Even if its something perhaps
Only he'll love
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Who's the singer, the summer bug
Content with its own love
Even if its something perhaps
Only he'll love
Sep 11, 2024
Sep 11, 2024 at 3:56 PM UTC
humidity broke
a cooling pavement littered
with Cicada chaff
Aug 26, 2022
Aug 26, 2022 at 5:34 AM UTC
overnight
the humidity broke
release
underfoot discarded Cicada sheathes
litter a cooling pavement
Aug 23, 2021
Aug 23, 2021 at 11:36 PM UTC
Cicadas gather on the grapevine,
a mass of wings and vibrating abdomens.
Males call out to females
but it is the grey squirrels who answer,
chattering loudly as they feast on insect flesh.
I sip cold wine and tap my fingers
on thin glass, watching and waiting.
My phone buzzes next to me;
you, calling, again.
I ignore it and turn my gaze back to the feast.
Jan 5, 2021
Jan 5, 2021 at 8:08 PM UTC
Cicadas singing
Crescendo in the dark wood
Summer's droning chorus
Aug 22, 2020
Aug 22, 2020 at 11:46 AM UTC
And the cicadas’ noise became music to her ears
Throbbing, slowly vibrating
to her feeble pulse
Like some musical nymphs
invading her quietude
A sudden foray into her tangled thoughts
A hearty diversion to her stubborn gloom
Aug 9, 2020
Aug 9, 2020 at 8:04 AM UTC
I’ve been,
Crawling,
Under the dirt,
Upon my abdomen.
Searching,
For the tree,
That I will hang from
And be set free.
This skin I wear
Encases me.
When I’ve moulted.
I will be free.
I will wiggle off the confounds
Of bone and flesh
Of space and time
And of birth and death.
I was once
A nymph.
Living on the roots,
Of the tree above me.
I was so small and hungry then,
But I have eaten enough now.
It is time to harden,
This old soft skin.
I’m passing through,
This knot,
In the infinite,
Line of life.
Aligning myself with the inner body.
Squirming out of this old biology.
Going beyond our senses,
And beyond our imaginations.
Cicada.
That inner beauty is shining through,
Becoming the apparatus that moves you.
Cicada.
Listen to the rhythm of your beating wings,
In tune to when the mother sings.
Cicada.
Break this skin,
Seventeen,
In the making.
Am I,
An island encased in a bag of skin?
Or am I,
The entirety of the ocean?
Am I,
An isolated ray of sunshine?
Or am I,
The source of the sun?
Am I,
An insignificant speck on a spinning ball?
Or am I,
Something a whole lot more?
I am, I am.
I am all that I am.
Tricked yourself long ago,
The joke of the speck
Stuck to a sphere,
Spinning out to nowhere.
This body is an egg,
That encapsulates me,
Soon it will hatch,
And set me free.
We are all nymphs,
Seventeen in the making.
Come and crawl with me,
Get down on your abdomen.
We are all going to climb the tree,
And disappear into seventeen again.
Mar 14, 2020
Mar 14, 2020 at 7:11 PM UTC
The cicada husk of the crescent moon sheds in cyclides light,
Molted whispers of life, spread like perfume behind the ear,
Or like silver earrings unadorned and scattered around the night-lit table.
Here too, the garden gown of Babylon lies heaped in soiled ruin,
Beaten down to sand at the foot of the bed of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Though the dunes are its aerial, root-bound springs,
Though the underground nymphs tend with cicala wings,
And underspurt of incessant summer song to lure
The resurrection rose of Jericho to bud once more,
In desert-faith for the hanging garden of a full moon.
Jun 19, 2019
Jun 19, 2019 at 1:08 PM UTC
They start as a single
before moving to unity
a chorus of chortles
to those who listen for that
It’s hard not to
when they rehearse in your right ear
and perform in the left
You said that they could
lent them the key
thought about drowning out
with a little symphony
What a ******* mistake that was
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 10:21 AM UTC
The cicada revealed itself to me.
Gray to the touch,
Streamlining itself into oval curves,
To cooperate with the summer storms.
I listened to the tangy air.
Watched as they organized their flight
And as they disappeared
With their flowery baggage
All while lightning struck the air.
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 2:16 AM UTC
The encompassing and deafening hum,
until Winter's grasp snuffs out the last one.
Malaise Summer fails rousing still Autumn,
by delaying the elliptical stone
Unawares, she slumbers in chaste chateau
Without prince Summer's kiss she won't be woke;
ode to sleeping beauty's enchanting thrall.
Though due time was granted, time now to stall
For he can't let go his cicada heart;
singing beau woes for Spring prior long gone
The pulsing winged drums maintains being sane
Yielding to Fall would at first worsen pain
The encompassing and deafening hum,
until Winter's grasp snuffs out the last one.
Jun 7, 2018
Jun 7, 2018 at 8:48 PM UTC
I can still hear the cicadas,
their inescapable and deafening hum.
They are the only thing I can hear,
and you are the only thing I can see.
Dry green canopies of less oft seen gums.
Rocky outcrops for zen water to trickle through.
I can still feel my heart beating to your drum,
the only thing I can feel.
Jun 4, 2018
Jun 4, 2018 at 3:30 AM UTC
millions of cicadas
how do they choose
their mate
Jan 14, 2018
Jan 14, 2018 at 8:58 PM UTC
Dimly glow the fireflies
In the densely wooded grove
The creek beside the promenade
Sounds like the whispers of the cove
In its solitary peace
The carp repress confessions
In the quiet emerald water
Live sorrows and obsessions
And when the cicadas buzz
They are like a music box
Young love is their handle and springs
They are the muse the world mocks
The melody of passion
Bleeds like the sap of the trees
On lukewarm nights of dancing stars
Love enters the world as breeze
A pair of lovers awaits
To live together at last
And as the date comes closer here
The future is not colorfast
Life's hourglass so expires
And there is not one who grieves
His final rest is too costly
So now he floats with the leaves
There's no wedding to foresee
Thus the bridge became of use
Her toes hang off the bridge again
But this time she holds a noose
Oh the irony of love
It's as the cicadas sang
"Be joyful now in summer's heat,
By our love, we all will hang."
The silly girl hanged herself
And she hung there not alone
Cicadas sang her melody
As her neck skin removed from her bone
And so she hung there quite still
Until her corpse decomposed
Her tale was not quite as haunting
As the music the cicadas composed
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 12:40 PM UTC
They sing from trees
Cicadas come with Summer
Bringing that endless "buzz"
I find myself nostalgic when caught beneath their spell
Still it hits my heart and makes me feel okay
A bittersweet melody
One I need to hear
Yet it makes me sad
A melancholy euphoria
Jul 1, 2017
Jul 1, 2017 at 1:18 AM UTC
That ******
Cicada.
She won’t let me sleep.
She won’t let me sleep!
Won’t let me sleep –
When I’ve worked my shift,
I’ve paid my rent,
I’ve fluffed my pillow.
Won’t let me sleep –
In between harassment,
In between the bill collectors,
The brawls and the ********
Won’t let me sleep –
When people fail,
When bombs fall
And children perish elsewhere.
She won’t let me sleep.
She won’t let me sleep!
That ******
Cicada.
She won’t let me sleep.
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 10:30 PM UTC
Rising
Falling
Cicada Waves
Teach me to Breathe
in the Depths of Breathlessness
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 3:32 PM UTC
haiku
buzzing, whirring (click)
bug eyes, and a face like a car
from nineteen fourty's!
soulsurvivor
(C) 7/14/2015
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 4:11 PM UTC